Sunday, 17 February 2013

First Upgrade!

The first upgrade we made in the living room was quite small, although it made such a difference in the room.

We bought our old DVD/CD stands for I think £5 each from a friend. However I pictured taller shelves either side of the fireplace for DVDs, CDs and some photo frames or ornaments as soon as I saw this room. Unfortunately we can't put shelves up on the walls, there is a damp proof coating under the plaster that cannot be perforated so we cannot hang anything on the walls below 1.5m. As this is a lower ground floor flat it's more likely to have damp or mould problems so I'm more than happy with these rules, as having had issues with damp/mould before I want to avoid it as much as the landlord and I'm glad they've taken the precaution.Although I can still see those floor to ceiling shelves in my head, white shelves maybe with built in cabinets at the bottom for storage (something like these), and it is disappointing not to be able have them but that's what being a tenant is about, sometimes adapting your plans to the property not the other way around.

So back to the point, our current DVD shelves were too small and too narrow and we had 3 not 2 so it resulted in this:

Not a great look and it also made for a useless corner that just collected things

We were on the hunt for some taller and wider shelves, but as the skirting boards are very thick the shelves were going to be a few cm away from the walls either side and were never going to fill the whole space and get that built in look I was hoping for.

I thought about buying shelves wide enough to fill the whole space then DIYing a solution to having a narrower base, but this would have made them a bit useless if we moved as they would have been adapted to fit such a specific space and being a tenant it is always good to
remember when buying furniture that you may need to use it again in
a different property. Personally I don't want to invest too much
money or time into something that won't be useable if we move, as eventually we
will leave here, even if it's not until we buy our own place.

We wanted bookshelves rather than DVD stands as
they're more flexible, we want to keep these for longer than the last ones and if we
end up moving or using these in a different room they can store a
multitude of things not just DVDs or CDs.

So we ended up going for these

They are narrower than I planned but it allowed for this

Storing things like the laptop, wii fit board and a guitar down the side of each one meant less clutter in this corner, yay to less clutter!

This also meant a reorganisation where our pictures were, well just an organisation really as there was no thought into it before they were just unpacked and leant againast any spare wall space.

Due to the stereo being on the shelves on the right it meant the extension cord we use to power it, and all of our other entertainment stuff (There are only 2 sockets this side of the room), was exposed, so I put a photo frame over it for now. This is meant to be a temporary solution but I actually like it more than cable tidies!

This is on top of the shelves on the left, a frame of momentos from our holiday to California last year. The sign hung on the shelves was a present from Tom! I wonder what he's trying to tell me...

More holiday pictures (From Yosemite and Furteventura) and some ornaments (turtles and my apprenticeship award) in with the DVDs on the left.

More pictures (Also from Fuerteventura) in the shelves on the right, and as our CD collection expands we can start to use this shelf if needed

Toms guitars, his pride and joy, which used to be on the wall in our previous house (Along with a frame wall, hence why we have so many picture frames scattered around), but now he has on stands.

So that's our first little upgrade. The bookshelves are from The Range and cost £54 each. They're solid pine and are just stained that darker colour, so if the mood struck me I could paint them if I wanted to personalise them a little more or if we moved to a new place and wanted them another colour, I have an ever increasing amount of books so even if we moved and couldn't make them work in the living room for DVDs they would never go unused!